


Nobody Else

by Kendrene



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alpha Kara Danvers, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/F, I Don't Even Know, Imprinting, Lena Luthor Doesn't Know Kara Danvers is Supergirl, Major Character Injury, Omega Lena Luthor, Smut, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:47:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21659293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kendrene/pseuds/Kendrene
Summary: Lena wakes to pain.Her body is a tapestry of it, a patchwork of limbs an unknown hand has torn apart and stitched badly back together. She rests beneath a heavy comforter, which has been tucked snugly around her, pulled right under her chin. Lena struggles against it – sharp pins dancing across her skin each time she moves. It’s too much. She’s suffocating.“She’s awake, Mr. Luthor.”“Yes, I can see that myself.”ORLex kidnaps Lena and engineeers her heat in order to draw Supergirl into a trap and kill her.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 20
Kudos: 781





	Nobody Else

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I'm an emotional mess right now and you all get to suffer with me.  
> \- Dren

Lena wakes to pain.

Her body is a tapestry of it, a patchwork of limbs an unknown hand has torn apart and stitched badly back together. She rests beneath a heavy comforter, which has been tucked snugly around her, pulled right under her chin. Lena struggles against it – sharp pins dancing across her skin each time she moves. It’s too much. She’s suffocating.

“She’s awake, Mr. Luthor.”

“Yes, I can see that myself.”

_Lex?_

It takes her several minutes to open her eyes after trickling into consciousness, and more to piece together what had happened. Lena remembers a car drive – vaguely – followed by the sound of screeching metal. Then, just before she lost consciousness, there was pain. Shards of it linger, nestled beneath her skin like ground glass. Lena tosses her head and bolts of red obscure her vision.

Harsh lights shine into her face, forcing her eyes shut, but Lena stubbornly resists and clings to wakefulness with all the strength she has. She is afraid that, if she succumbs to sleep, she’ll never wake again.

“I’m afraid your driver didn’t make it.” Lex’s voice drifts to her from above, dripping with false pity. “But what’s a little collateral damage in the grand scheme of things?” 

She can see her brother now, after a fashion, outlined by the light. His face hangs above hers, partly shadowed, but his eyes are seas of swirling blue. Hard and remote, they have the same color of a slab of ice hit by the sun, and Lena finds she can’t read him through them. Not the way she used to. He examines her as he would a Petri dish, with interest and a faint air of distaste. Or like she is a roach, trapped under his foot.

“Give her another dose.” Lex says pushing a lock of hair off her damp forehead. Her entire body is damp, Lena realizes, her skin slick with sweat. Lex pats her head and his lips curve, but the smile doesn’t thaw his eyes. At odds with the rest of his demeanor, his hand on her brow is gentle. 

“Be still now and let the doctor do his job, yes? It’s for your own good.” 

His mouth twitches in a way Lena remembers from their childhood. Generally speaking, Lex always was the diligent child but, sometimes, he too would break the rules. When he did - and managed to not get caught - his mouth would quiver on the verge of a full, satisfied grin. The one thing about Lex that had remained unchanged was his love for secrets. 

The pale shadow of that smile she knows so well is enough to tell Lena Lex is lying. 

“Mr. Luthor.” The doctor approaches the bed she lay in, throwing Lex a nervous look. “Are you sure? She’s already nearing threshold sickness.” 

“Oh? And what did you think the point of all this was?” Her brother gestures to the room around them but, when Lena tries to follow with her eyes, nausea clamps, vicious and acidic, around her stomach. 

“Now do it. Or I’ll find somebody else.” The threat is implicit, but clear. 

Desperate, Lena tries to sit up, but her ribs grind together in blinding agony. Something in there is broken or - at the very least - splintered. With a pained scream she falls back on the sweat-stained sheets and a moment later the doctor is upon her. A needle bites into the inside of Lena’s elbow, cold and sharp, but whatever substance she is injected with is colder still. 

Ice flowing through her veins, it burns worse than a fire and Lena thrashes against the grip the doctor has on her. His hands tighten around her arms, exerting enough pressure to keep her still. It doesn’t take long for Lena to stop trying, her body too exhausted to put up much of a fight.

Just as her voice breaks, throat raw from all the screaming, Lena slips back into the darkness. 

********

When she comes to again, Lena is alone.

She blinks, slow and careful, wary of the crippling nausea which assaulted her when she’d tried to move before. Scared of the pain. 

It coils inside her stil, but it is dull now, an ache she can put out of her mind if she concentrates hard enough. Still, every movement is like an uphill battle and the simple act of plucking at the blankets to try and peek underneath is enough to leave her short of breath. 

They haven’t bothered removing her clothes, but her blouse is open, revealing a set of ugly-looking bruises all across her torso. Their pattern seems compatible with the little Lena recalls of the car crash. Wires connect her to a heart monitor nearby and, although Lena’s first instinct is to pull them off and rip the IV line embedded in the back of her right hand she refrains. 

A security camera hangs from the ceiling, pointed directly at her.

It blinks red as she stared, like it’s winking down at her, and she lets the blanket go. Resisting now will earn her nothing, if not another dose of whatever the doctor gave her last. 

If she wants to escape, Lena needs a plan.

The room around her is plain, with little to see. The walls are painted a glaring white, but a few coats of hastily applied paint poorly disguise the metal underneath. If that wasn’t been enough to give her pause, the lack of windows would have exposed the lie. Or the door, a slab of brute steel the likes of which are found in maximum security facilities. 

A prison then, pretending to be a hospital.

Lena is wondering what else she can find out - the doctor had seemed reluctant and, perhaps, if he comes back without her brother she can convince him to help - when the door slides open with a hiss. 

“You said a stronger dose would work!” Lex growls his way into the room, the doctor cowering in his shadow. His eyes come to rest on her and narrow to displeased slits. 

“She’s more resistant than I had anticipated, Mr. Luthor. If I had more time…” 

“You don’t. If anything, you’ve wasted more than enough already. Now give her another dose.”

At that the doctor pales. 

“Another- Mr. Luthor, a third dose, so close to the other two could be fatal. Surely there is-” 

There’s a loud bang, and the doctor falls to the ground. His eyes are open but unseeing and a blood wells into the small hole the bullet left on his forehead to snake down his cheek and pool on the floor. Under the fluorescents, the blood looks almost too red to be true. Lena wants to vomit. 

Lex sighs and holsters his handgun. 

“What?” He meets her shocked gaze with a nonchalant shrug. “I _did_ warn him.” 

Lena wets her lips, but says nothing. This isn’t the affectionate older brother who’d made life in Luthor Manor bearable. He isn’t the young man who praised Lena for her accomplishments when Lillian wouldn’t, nor the one who encouraged her to pursue a degree in science at MIT when her stepmother would have much preferred she wrapped like an ornament around the arm of some wealthy alpha. 

This version of Lex is foreign to her. Alien. 

“Truly.” He says as he rummages through the contents of the medical trolley next to her bed. “If you want something done well, you have to do it yourself.” 

He turns to her a moment later, a vial of blue liquid held between thumb and forefinger. When Lex tips the vessel closer to her face the substance swirls lazily with the motion. He avidly watches her stare at the liquid and his eyes are all pupil. Dark obsidian and full of twinkling malice. The rest of his face is schooled to stillness, which makes the delirious light that consumes him from within all the more frightening. It’s zealotry - the unshakable conviction that he is above all others. A self-elected architect of fate. 

Lena is sure that Lex can smell her fear. She knows he can hear the rumble of her thoughts as she tries to figure out what he plans to give her by sight alone, and the realization makes her want to close her eyes. Tilt her face away. 

It’s exactly what Lex would want her to do - he wants the fear to break her. 

The substance is the shade of a summer sky, or perhaps calm ocean waters and Lena is reminded of the hue of Kara’s eyes. 

The stray thought is oddly comforting, even though Lena knows her friend is miles and miles away and unaware of what is happening to her. She’s relieved, actually. If Kara was with her she’d be in danger. _And I don’t want her to see me like this because…_ Because, for Lena, Kara is...

“Unfortunately only the doctor knew the exact dosage.” Lex says with mild annoyance as he prepares a syringe. Lena thanks whatever gods are listening he hasn’t found a way to read her mind yet. “So I guess we’ll have to use it all and see what happens.”

Lena opens her mouth to reason with him, or perhaps beg, but her throat is full of sand. All that comes is a frazzled croak. It would be useless anyhow - her brother is immune to begging. 

“I know, I know.” Lex leans closer, lips stretched in the indulgent smile he used to regal her with when they were kids and he snuck sweets into her room, late at night. “You don’t approve of uncontrolled clinical trials. I hope you understand, it’s for the greater good.” 

The needle pierces her skin and Lena burns. 

********

Rescue comes unexpectedly, when she has all but given up.

Lena had been slipping in and out of consciousness and, each time, she’d embraced the darkness willingly.

An entire desert now resides in the space between her bones and Lena idly thinks that, if someone cut her open, she’d bleed sand. Her skin wraps too tightly around the flesh beneath, a strata of dry parchment that will break if she moves too much too fast. Even though she’s sure all moisture has been sucked away from her, she keeps sweating - her body is on fire. The sheets, her clothes, the comforter - everything is soaked. 

Her lips feel crusted with salt.

She has managed to lift a hand to her face and is wondering why she hasn’t turned to ash yet, when the door blows inward. The hinges, Lena notes, have been sheared clean. Cut by a laser beam. 

A wave of sound follows, making the bed frame vibrated under her.

People are shouting close by, the _pop-pop-pop_ of an automatic weapon tangled with the screams, but Lena’s mind is drifting again and everything feels like an hallucination.

Then, a shadow falls across the doorway. The light behind it is blinding, burning, and the silhouette shimmers against it. Lena slits her eyes and, biting back a groan, pushes up on one elbow to get a better look.

Metal flashes in the shadow’s hand and something zips mere inches from her face. It goes by too fast for Lena to say what it is, but she feels its aftermath - a vortex of displaced air lashing at her cheek.

Next, the newcomer is thrown into the room, describing an arc similar to the one the door had followed. 

From the jet-black riot gear and the lack of insignia, Lena recognizes one of Lex’s guards, but has no time to take in other details.

A second figure flows across the floor so fast all Lena sees is a blur of red and blue. 

It’s enough.

Lena sinks back into the bed, a grateful sob tearing from her chest. Everything is going to be okay. Supergirl has come to save her. 

The noise of combat draws closer, surging in the heroine’s wake. Lena can distinguish some of the voices now: Alex shouting orders and J’onn calling her name. Gunfire has all but stopped, what resistance her brother’s guards put up overcome by D.E.O. forces. 

She wants to call back, to tell them where she is, but her mouth can’t form the words and her eyes are glued to Supergirl. 

The remaining guard is crawling across the floor. One of his arms drags limply behind him, obviously broken, his other hand outstretched. His eyes are fixed on something metal, the same silver-grey color Lena had spotted before. In the dizzying whiteness of the room she can see the shape more clearly: a revolver.

Before he can get there he’s yanked back and lifted by the throat until only the steel-reinforced toes of his boots scrape the ground. 

“What have you done to her?” 

Supergirl has never looked this terrifying. There’s something feral in the way her lips pull back to show the white flash of her teeth and her words are chips of ice driving into the man’s skin.

Her eyes blaze like deep-set coals, angry and red rimmed in the neon light. Lena’s seen that sort of look before and, as her brows knit in an effort to remember, grogginess receds.

There had been a video file - she stumbled upon it while she was reinforcing the D.E.O. firewalls at Alex’s request - and the fact it was encrypted felt more like an invitation than a “Keep Out” sign. Lena can recall being quite impressed with the code, and frustrated it took her three whole days with barely any sleep to crack it. 

Frustration that quickly turned to shock when she played the recording for the first time. 

It was Supergirl in action, but engaged with a team of D.E.O. operatives rather than hostiles. Her movements had been chopped and erratic, far removed from the elegant, liquid fighting style Lena was used to seeing. What parts of Supergirl’s skin the suit didn’t cover were different too, but Lena hadn’t been able to tell how until she’d frozen a frame and magnified the image.

After, she wished she hadn’t opened the file at all. 

Black and red veins slithered just below the surface of the heroine’s skin. If she played the video frame by frame, Lena could see them pulse, alighting from within. It was like watching vermin dig deep burrows into Supergirl’s flesh, and the more violently she fought the more they spread. Her skin, where it hadn't fissured to weep a lambent, hellish red, looked ashen.

Corpse-like. 

A similar aura hangs over her now, tendrils of red and black that crackle along her arms when Lena squints. Her heart hammers away in abject terror, but its irregular staccato also travels downward until each beat resonates between her thighs. Supergirl is an impending storm, a demi-god descended from the heavens to bring justice. She is the electric quiet between lightning and rumbling thunder. Lena can feel the tension of it all inside her ribcage, and taste it on her tongue. It leaves her mouth tingly and numb. 

Afraid for her life, possibly dying, she can’t help but be aroused beyond belief. 

Supergirl’s fingers flex around the guard’s throat and he gurgles. He opens his mouth wide to breathe and the air makes an ugly, wheezing sound as it travels down his windpipe. 

“ _WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO LENA?_ ” 

His face is slowly turning blue.

Lena is suddenly very much awake. She’s aware of how strong Supergirl is, how fast. She’s seen it before, plenty of times, but it never _clicked_. Not when she’s seen her keep an airplane from crashing into water, nor when she’d single-handedly kept a drifting oil tanker from colliding with the piers at National City harbor. 

Not after she’d watched her tear through layers of cement like it were cardboard. 

But now, with the fragile existence of a man clutched in Supergirl’s hands, Lena does see it. Just as she sees the life being strangled out of him. His eyes are glossy, the sclera already dotted with the red of blown blood vessels. 

In her rage, Supergirl is blind to it. She squeezes, harder, and shouts her question in his face, not understanding that he lacks the air to answer it. She is too hyper-focused on the guard, too wrapped in her aggression-fueled high to have noticed the bed and Lena in it.

Red and black. 

Lena shudders and buries her face in the pillow to escape the searing glare only she can see. It is no use. The colors push through her eyelids, forcing her eyes open. 

Red.

Black.

“ _Stop!_ ” Her voice is hoarse. Broken into something she doesn’t recognize as hers.

At first she doubts Supergirl heard her at all but, then, the blonde head swivels round and her eyes hone in on Lena. 

They aren’t black, exactly, but light-devouring, colorless pits. They will swallow Lena too if she isn’t careful. The part of her that’s hurting and fever-crazed with pain, sort of wants to. There’s a promise of shelter in the abyss, of shade - and her scorched-feeling skin is desperate for it. 

“Don’t.” 

Supergirl watches her. Unmoving. Unmoved.

“I’m fine, see?” Lena hisses between clenched teeth. Every word is a raw, bleeding fissure on her lips. Red droplets gather at the corners of her mouth and she licks them reflexively, tongue curling in protest at the taste. “If you kill him, the guilt will kill _you_ . I know you. You have morals, a code. You’re not…” _A Luthor._ Lena gestures, vaguely. Exhausted. “...this.” 

Supergirl blinks and, suddenly, fractals of bright blue are filling the void of her gaze. The madness that possessed her lifts and horror dawns on her face. Her cheeks are sunk by shame. 

“ _Rao_.”

The guard crumples to the floor with a clatter of body armor. He’s unconscious, but his chest rises - once, twice, three times. He’s alive. 

“Rao, Lena!” Supergirl’s voice is a sore whisper. As she contemplates what she almost did her shoulders fall and, to Lena, she appears diminished. Fragile. Her eyes, which are slowly reverting to their vibrant blue, are watery with tears and, for a moment, it’s like staring at Kara’s doppelganger. 

_Weird._

Then, something fascinating happens. Lena can see a change come over Supergirl: jaws clenched, her eyes grow far and clouded, her shoulders straighten and she is fit for the cape again. A hero, through and through.

But Lena knows better. Just like she saw her dark aura take tangible shape, she now witnesses the process of her thoughts. As if she acquired x-ray vision by proximity she watches Supergirl store away the near disaster for a later time. Or perhaps for never - somehow she doesn’t think the alpha has a healthy way to deal with trauma.

Then again, she’s one to talk. 

“I’m here.” 

Having gathered herself, Supergirl steps forward. The alpha takes in the snarl of wires connecting Lena to the medical machines, hands clenching and unclenching while she struggles to make sense of which does what. 

“Alex!” She calls after moments intense study. “Hurry up!” 

Lena wets her lips again, tongue bothering one of the cuts until it bleeds again, this time into her mouth. She’s so ravaged by thirst she’d do anything to quench it - even drink of her own blood. 

“No, Lena. No.” The ice in Supergirl’s voice has melted into something softer. Something warm that laps placidly at her burning mind. It soothes her a litte. “You’re going to hurt your mouth more if you keep that up. Let me look for some water. Let me- Alex!” She sounds so much like Kara too, nervous stutter and all. 

Just a trick played on her by desire, Lena knows, and yet. Strange what lies the mind can conjure up when close to breaking.

Time, which had ground to a standstill when Supergirl had found her, chooses that moment to resume its flow. It lurches around them and the room wobbles with it making Lena violently sick over the floor.

“ _ALEX_!” 

Blood rushes to her head, cancelling every other sound and Lena pitches forward. If it weren’t for Supergirl’s strong arms she’d end up on the ground, but the alpha is holding her close, a hand pulling strands of sweat-sheened hair away from her face. 

Lena vomits the light lunch she had before getting in the car, and the earlier breakfast. She heaves until she’s empty and then some, bile drawing paths of fire along her lips. 

She’s turning to ash now - she feels the flames line her every bone. She panics and flails, knocking several wires loose. They writhe on the floor and the heart monitor beside her shrieks, giving voice to her alarm. She’ll burn and burn and _burn_ down to blackened bone, then down to nothing. 

Except a hand is pressed firmly to her brow and, for the first time in hours, her body cools. 

********

When she cracks open one eye, they are moving. 

Supergirl is cradling her to her chest the same way one would hold a child. Lena’s curled into her in turn, trembling fingers clasped around a fold of her red cape. It’s a lifeline - _her_ lifeline - and the color doesn’t scare her anymore. 

Next to them Alex is talking, big medical terms that make little sense to Lena. _Severe dehydration_ and _blood samples_ \- the words buzz inside her ears but she doesn’t care. Supergirl’s body is pressed into her own and the fire that made her hurt so much is gone. 

Closing her eyes, she nuzzles closer, cheek scrunched against the S symbol on the suit. Its hard ridges will leave marks on her pale skin but Lena doesn’t care about that either. The heroine’s heartbeat beats in time with hers, the sway in her step rocking her to sleep. 

As her eyes begin to droop she has time for one last thought. It’s relief laced with guilt because even now, with her body on the verge of shutting down, her inner thighs are sticky with attraction. Even now Lena cannot help but appreciate the way Supergirl’s arms tense, muscles leaping against her back, when the heroine shifts her weight around or tightens the hold she has on her. 

She cannot, shouldn’t feel like this. 

Not when she’s in love with Kara. 

**Author's Note:**

> join me[ on Tumblr](https://kendrene.tumblr.com/) for more gay nonsense!
> 
> [or find me on TWITTER](https://twitter.com/Kendrene17/)


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